On Saturday, 6 March 1756, Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV was staged in the Assembly Room on Castle Street in the town of Tralee in county Kerry. Far from being a one-off, this heralded the start of a season of theatrical performances by a troupe of actors who had travelled from Dublin. There were thirty nights of performances between the opening on 6 March and the final entertainment on Monday 10 May 1756. Why were Shakespeare’s and other plays being performed in a small town on Ireland’s south-west Atlantic coast, and what might have been the social, cultural, and commercial circumstances of their performance? It is suggested that the plays may have been staged as part of an effort on the part of the town’s proprietor and local landowner, Sir Thomas Denny, to develop Tralee as a destination for medical tourism and spa sociability.

This article identifies Thomas Spring and Barry Yelverton as the authors of three previously unattributed poems written between 1758 and 1761, around the time these two were beginning their law studies at the Middle Temple in London. Based on internal evidence from the poems themselves and clues from Samuel Whyte’s 1772 anthology The Shamrock and other sources, I argue they should be viewed as products of a short-lived literary coterie. The article first examines the poems within their original manuscript context and how Spring and his friends explore the theme of choosing poetic anonymity as they contemplate embarking on careers in the law. Next, it examines the print history of these poems, which illustrates the conflicting motives of poets and anthologists who repackage manuscript poems in printed forms. Making these poems public in printed collections obscured the authors’ identities by obscuring the existence of the literary coterie to which they belonged. Bringing this coterie to light draws attention to the complex ways poetry functioned, in manuscript and in print, in eighteenth-century Ireland and invites further scholarly examination of these poems.

The history of residential army barracks in Ireland has in recent years become a focus for more concerted study. 1 While a number of works focused upon individual barracks have been published over the years since the 1970s, 2 the first substantive consideration as to why a permanent country-wide network of barracks was built in Ireland in the late 1690s and early eighteenth century was first published in 2012. This work assessed why these barracks were built, how they were paid for, and ultimately what purposes they served. 3 Since then, additional work has been undertaken with regard to a more comprehensive identification and inventorying of over 360 such barracks built between 1690 and 1922. 4 However, while some consideration has been given to the impact of the building of a country-wide network of barracks upon cartographic practice, 5 there has been little to no assessment of the impact that such residential army barracks had upon patterns of settlement. It is the aim of this article to assess these interlinked elements of barrack-building, mapping, and settlement patterns in relation to each other in an eighteenth-century context, with a particular focus upon barracks built in County Armagh. 6

The commercial baths on Bachelor’s Walk in Dublin run by ‘Dr’ Achmet Borumbadad throughout the 1770s, if celebrated, tend to be treated as evidence of Achmet’s chicanery and of his powerful supporters’ gullibility. However, the bath complex can be defended as an innovative project to improve Dubliners’ health. The mysteries around Achmet’s origins (apparently in Ireland) and his showmanship have meant that the enterprise and its director have often been suspected of fraud. Yet the published records of those treated at the baths suggest that they – uniquely – supplied a much-needed want. In addition to the baths, Achmet was involved in another project intended to benefit the laborious of Dublin. Through the British ambassador in Spain, he hoped to develop a trade in Irish poplins. After a promising start, the plan foundered. By the 1780s, Achmet faced mounting financial problems, only resolved when the baths were swept away by the Wide Streets commission. His subsequent career is largely unknown, but intertwined with that of his wife, Catherine. Mrs Achmet had some success as an actor in both Ireland and England while theatricality marked her husband’s methods. The episodes demonstrate opportunism on Achmet’s part, credulity among some of his backers, but also contributed to public health, fashionable conviviality, and prospectively to useful employment in later eighteenth-century Dublin.

Trinity College Dublin can claim many distinguished poets among its alumni. One, less well-remembered than he deserves, is the poet and schoolmaster William Dunkin, who produced a large corpus of poetry between the 1720s and his death in 1765. From his early years until his death, he was supported financially by the College, out of the rents that it received from estates in County Louth that had been left to the College by his grand-aunt Anne Echlin, on condition that it support and educate him. Dunkin believed that these lands were his birthright and should have been left to him. The early part of this article begins with a summary of the record of Trinity College as alma mater of poets writing in English before about 1900, followed by an exploration of William Dunkin’s poetical achievements. The later part explores the origins and functioning of Mrs Echlin’s legacy, and its consequences – for Dunkin over his lifetime, and for the College.

Though best known for his involvement with the United Irishmen and his brief career as a newspaper editor, William Paulet Carey (1768–1848) was one of the first, and most interesting practitioners of graphic satire in Ireland during its inaugural phase. Having demonstrated his potential with an artistically indifferent caricature of the Gordon Riots in 1780, he acquired a fuller knowledge of the craft engraving copy plates for William Allen, then Dublin’s primary print seller. Subsequently, Carey sought, unsuccessfully, to make his mark in London in 1783–84, though he did produce a number of distinctive engravings in the Whig cause. Back in Dublin, he resumed his relationship with William Allen, in the course of which he produced a series of superior copies of William Bunbury’s single sheets and smaller engravings for a Dublin edition of the Geoffrey Gambado’s Annals of Horsemanship . Carey possessed strong political opinions, and having manifested his unease at the energizing of Irish conservativism with caricatures critical of the advocates of ‘Protestant Ascendancy’ in 1786–87, he prioritized literary satire until the early 1790s when he joined the United Irishmen and established a radical newspaper. However, his failure, other than on one occasion, to use his artistic skills in the radical cause deprived Irish radicalism of a potentially important means of promoting their cause.